Lately, I’ve been eager to understand what it means to be human.
So I’ve been taking an Anthropology 101 lecture series while reading The Art of Being Human by Michael Wesch.
And I came across a paragraph I haven’t been able to get out of my head.
Wesch wrote:
“The art of seeing can be broken up into four parts. First, we have to see our own seeing—that is, see how we see the world, recognizing our own taken-for-granted assumptions, and be able to set them aside. Second, we have to “see big,” to see the larger cultural, social, economic, historical, and political forces that shape our everyday lives. Third, we have to “see small,” paying close attention to the smallest details and understanding their significance. And finally, we have to “see it all,” piecing all of this together to see how everything we can see interacts from a holistic point of view.”
I read that and immediately thought:
This isn’t only anthropology.
This is creativity.
The more I study great creators, the less I think creativity begins with making and the more I think it begins with seeing.
Perception.
Artists improve as they learn to see more of the world.
Art of seeing = See your own seeing + See big + See small + See it all.
And Wesch’s four ways of seeing gave me a formula for how that happens.
1: See your own seeing
Before you can see the world differently, you have to notice the lens you’re already looking through.
We have ideas about what good art looks like.
What serious writing sounds like.
What music is cool.
But where did those rules come from?
Most were handed to us.
By a teacher. A parent. A critic. An algorithm. A genre. A trend. An industry.
We’ve spent our lives collecting all these ways of seeing.
And eventually those ways of seeing stopped feeling learned. They started feeling true.
That’s the trap. And there’s only one way out…
We have to become capable of stepping outside our view. Even just for a moment.
And asking: What would I make if I stopped assuming this had to be made the way I currently think it should be made?
2: See big
Then Wesch said we have to learn to see the larger forces shaping our lives.
All that history. Culture. Economics. Technology. Politics. Institutions.
And for an artist, this means realizing that no piece of work just randomly appears out of nowhere.
We’re creating inside a giant conversation that started long before we were born.
So a musician who makes a song today isn’t only working with melody and rhythm like ancient tribes were.
They’re also working inside global streaming economics. TikTok loops. Music production bedroom-setups. Sampling. Auto-tune. A century of recorded music. Thousands of musical traditions.
That entire world sits invisibly inside whatever song they create.
The same is true for every kind creator across any domain.
And once you start seeing those forces, context becomes a creative collaborator.
We can start asking better questions about why we create.
A big aspect of originality is understanding the conversation between these forces well enough to say something the conversation hasn’t heard before.
Once you see the water everyone’s swimming in.
Suddenly…the water becomes a medium too.
3: See small
I talk about this a lot, but it’s so true…
Creators notice things.
Almost invisible things.
Like the path to a seemingly impossible future.
The melody in a car’s ticking blinker.
The picture-perfect millisecond.
Most people pass right through those moments.
The artist stops.
But what happens when you stop is important. Your level of attention matters.
Beginners often create from categories.
Loneliness. Love. Anger. Beauty. Loss.
But those are enormous words that hold a lot of attention.
A seasoned artist keeps looking until the category becomes a moment.
Loneliness becomes the second toothbrush still sitting beside the sink.
Grief becomes updating your phone’s wallpaper to honor their memory.
Love becomes noticing they’re cold before they say they are.
You would think the more specific something becomes, the fewer people would relate to it.
But the opposite happens…
The more precise the observation, the more human it feels.
So instead of asking: What is happening?
The artist learns to ask: Exactly what is happening?
“Exactly”…that one word changes everything.
4: See it all
And then comes the part I find most interesting.
We put everything together.
We see our own seeing.
We see big.
We see small.
And then we begin noticing relationships between them.
Our inner world.
The outer world.
And the tiny details sitting between the two.
This is where something abstract starts becoming art.
Let’s jump into the mind of an artist for a moment….
Imagine a photographer on a train who notices people staring at their phones.
Seeing small notices their bent necks. The light from the screen bouncing off their faces. The thumbs moving instinctively. The people six inches away from each other who might as well be six miles away.
Then seeing big notices smartphones. Social media. Attention economics. Urban life. Changing public space. Shifting human connection. A world where we can reach almost anyone while barely looking at the person beside us.
Then seeing their own seeing asks: Why does this bother me? What do I believe connection is supposed to look like?
And with the snap of a photo…all of those ways of seeing come together as a larger question appears:
“Can we be connected to everyone and present with no one?”
Now the photographer has something more than a photograph of a group of people holding their phones.
They have a question about being alive right now.
They have a point of view.
They have a photo capturing a worldview.
And that level of attention is beautiful to witness because it’s an act of love.
Think about it…
To really see someone is to notice the small things they thought no one noticed. To understand the larger world and life that shaped them. To question the assumptions you’ve placed on them. And then, somehow, to hold all of it at once.
Being able to look at another human being in their impossible complexity and say, “There you are. I see you.” brings us closer.
Because someone paid enough attention long enough to discover who was actually there.
Seeing is powerful because it’s impactful.
Creativity is more a perception problem than an idea problem.
Before you can make something you’ve never made before, you may need to see something you’ve never seen before.
A contradiction. A pattern. A strange detail. A cultural shift.
The world is overflowing with inspiration to work with.
But you can only create from what you’re capable of perceiving.
If you see the same things everyone else sees, through the same assumptions, at the same level of detail, you’ll probably keep arriving at familiar ideas.
But change how you see, and suddenly there are questions everywhere.
Tensions. Metaphors. Stories. Possibilities.
Everything everywhere is extraordinary.
Maybe the world doesn’t need to become more interesting.
Maybe we just need to become more interested.
Stay creative,
Way Walker